Advertisement

Guest Information

Chikashi Kubota

Animation DirectorJapan

Biography:Chikashi Kubota was born August 29, 1978. During his elementary school years, he first started honing his drawing skills by imitating the then popular Dragon Ball. He clearly remembers wanting to animate for the Dragon Ball series. That desire was the catalyst for starting him on the path to becoming an animator.

When he was in high school, Mr. Kubota came across a "Now Hiring" ad in an anime magazine for Xebec, Inc., an anime production studio. He thought to himself, "If they are in such a rush to hire, then perhaps they would even consider hiring a high school student such as myself..." He applied with naive optimism, and ended up failing miserably. However, it was through this application process that he met animator Nobuyoshi Habara. Under Mr. Habara's guidance, Mr. Kubota continued to improve his drawing skills, and ultimately was able to study animation at Xebec while simultaneously commuting to vocational school. Mr. Kubota left the vocational school after one year, and joined Xebec officially as an animator in 1998.

Since then, Mr. Kubota moved on to work at Studio Gainax where he worked as animator and animation director on works such as Gurren Lagann, and Diebuster the Movie. During the same time, he worked as animation director on some of Hosoda Mamoru's works like One Piece: Baron Omatsuri and the Island of Secrets and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.

More recently, Mr. Kubota did the character designs for From the New World and Robotics;Notes. He also participated as an animation director and an animator in Space Dandy, which led to serving as character designer and chief animation director for the TV series One Punch Man.